


Stargazer

by heli0s



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Emotions, F/M, Pining, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-11
Updated: 2019-09-11
Packaged: 2020-10-14 20:36:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20606927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heli0s/pseuds/heli0s
Summary: You watch a very special star every night. A different one watches you back.





	Stargazer

It’s past four in the morning when the quinjet sputters to a stop nearly two miles away from the compound hangar. The mission that was supposed to be quick and simple turned out to be an ambush—you and Steve rapelling down into the Atlantic, grabbing a package discreetly, and making haste off the armored frigate before anyone caught wind. 

Instead, they were expecting it.

Cap’s shield spit back what seemed like a million bullets as he pummeled forward. Your torso ate seven deep cuts and even advanced healing couldn’t quite keep up with the gore. Countless punches and kicks landed, and when the energy from your fingertips fizzled out, you reloaded so many times you lost count.

In the end, an eternity wrapped up in the reality of thirty-five short minutes, you stumbled.

Steve pulled back, kneeled down, and scooped you up with one arm like a rag doll. Natasha’s calm directives into the commlink did nothing to soothe the panic and humiliation of your first failed mission.

“One out of thirteen is just fine.” Steve had said as the jet lifted away, steadying you in his grip. “It’s---”

Then the missile hit and the three of you staggered through the air, dipping partially into the water before the thrusters kicked back on. The slamming of your body against an armrest tore open the wounds that were starting to stitch themselves shut. Your blood splattered over the back of Natasha’s neck.

To say that you are _upset_ upon crawling out of the tilted jet is an understatement. Your ribs still prick, pores weeping red and trickling down to your thighs.

“Hey! It’s okay. You’re safe. We’re all safe. That’s what matters.”

He’s smiling at you while he tears off his helmet, shaking loose his damp hair. Even in the deep darkness of the pre-dawn, you could count the strands of gold if he got close enough. Your heart could collapse and slide right out through your chest when he earnestly searches your face.

Natasha is behind him, mouth pinched slightly in a frown when she sees your eyes welling.

“Y-yeah. I know.” You respond, swallowing thickly. It’s stupid. You can’t help it. You don’t want to disappoint anyone—least of all, Steve. He laughs a joyful sound of your name, pats you on the shoulder and it stings.

“You’re doin’ just fine.”

_God_.

Swift footsteps pad through the dewy grass. Puffed, clipped breaths alert you to the two approaching. You ache even more when you see them.

Bucky halts next to you, inspecting—squinting at your side mostly. Your suit is barely held together, the cuts so long and sticky it looks like you are wearing wet threads. You brush him off, but he is insistent, “What the hell happened?” 

Sharon is seconds behind him, throwing herself into Steve’s arms. “You alright?” She asks, breathless, palms reaching up to hold his face, turning him left and right. “We got the message—saw the jet burning. I got so scared.”

“I’m alright, sweetheart.” He buries his face into her neck, breathing deeply.

“Nat?” Sharon asks, peeking over at where the flame of Natasha’s hair smooths into the splash over her nape.

“It’s not mine.” She nods towards you wrapping your arms around your body. The embarrassment crawls up to your eyes. Salty and wet. Held together by tension and a prayer that neither of them may see you crying.

Sharon sighs into Steve’s mouth and wipes the soot from his chin. You don’t exist to either of them now.

“It’s gorgeous, isn’t it?” Steve interjects in awe as he tilts his head up, grasping Sharon’s hand lovingly. They’re lost in their own world, gazing at each other.

Under the scattered light of the Milky Way, your throat constricts with the first tear slipping down. But you are quickly turned around, facing the tree line, and wiping it off, smudging the trail into the dirt and it smears like mud over your cheek.

“Are _you_ alright?” Bucky asks, tilting his chin closer to you, out of earshot. Nodding quietly, you turn and give your best impression of a grin. Bucky frowns in response and opens his mouth but Steve cuts him off.

“Might as well stay for a little bit, huh?” Steve plops in the grass, tugs Sharon down with him and they laugh together, her head on his chest, his hand on her back.

Natasha grumbles about wanting to be in her own bed and stomps over their legs. She stills next to you, sending a sideways glance. “Don’t.” She commands curtly, “Don’t get stuck in your head about it.”

You say nothing because it’s already stuck in there. You slump down behind two flaxen heads inclined together, shimmering the same shade. You would go back with Natasha, but you are so damn exhausted, and the thought of trekking two miles hurts your sides.

Trailing a hand gingerly up, you pull a face and count your ribs. None seem broken, but you push a little harder, because something is pinching awfully tight underneath the thin and newly healed skin.

Steve looks back momentarily the same time Bucky sits down next to you. He beams that perfect white grin and you wish your ribs were broken because then you’d have a good reason as to why you feel split in half.

Bucky pulls your hand away. “You’re doin’ it again.”

“I’m not… doing anything.” You mutter. “Obviously incapable of doing very much at all.”

Bucky clicks his tongue, a brief noise to silence you, and lifts the tatters of your outfit. He carefully inspects the skin- stretched tight like saran wrap-- as you lean and elevate your elbow. _It hurts_, you tell him, _stop poking so hard_. He clicks again, rubbing his thumb over each slash, letting your flesh be warmed by his touch.

“Tell me about 'em.”

The two of you do this, sometimes, outside on the lawn when you’ve had enough of crying and nightmares. It’s your distraction from the darkness—the mourning of your years spent pining for light and pining for love.

Above, moonless black fades to indigo. The swirl of stars brushes over the sky like an unfurling length of voile, woven with pearls and diamonds. A million and one flickers churning delicately. Jupiter dazzles. Polaris stuns. The first blush of dawn in the east heralds Saturn into view, nestled inside the constellation of Sagittarius. Antares, two fists over to its right, blooms a barely-there red.

You count them, whispering their names to Bucky, closing your eyes to evoke the first time you saw the sky again after the Raft. It was something you missed so fiercely during your imprisonment, caged in behind the glass and steel.

You were taken after an abrupt misfire of your powers. An altercation behind a movie theatre— young men, following your shadow, shocked and burned into blisters. You were barely nineteen and labeled a threat to public safety by Thaddeus Ross.

It wasn’t until Steve came to retrieve his friends did you escape, too. You had spent half a decade without knowing how many moons rose and set. He’s the one who held you that night on top of the Raft, waiting for the jet to take the fear away, listening to you weep and stutter about the celestial bodies above.

You’ve been with him ever since. Owing him your allegiance and your life. Dreaming about the dark and his blue eyes for the last three years.

It’s where your mind goes when you feel like collapsing: his arms. His memory.

Tonight had been your first mission back into the ocean. Perfectly fitting, your thirteenth one, plunging you into the sea and pulling you out to find Sharon leaned against the vibranium of Steve’s shield. Three white points peek out, the others hidden beneath her splayed curls. Two perfect and infatuated blonde heads.

To your side, Bucky shifts, following your stare. “You’re just fine, darlin’.” He soothes, placing one arm over your shoulder and letting you lean into him.

He’s been with you, too, in the background of your yearning for Steve. It’s been years and years and you still cling to the image of Captain America, your constant North Star, to guide you through the shadows. Even though you’re not a kid anymore and not atop the Raft, sobbing about the open air.

Bucky knows your feelings. He’s watched them simmer for so long, ever since piloting the jet away. He watched the adoration grow in your eyes since the first meeting, watched it snuffed out with Steve’s obliviousness, watched it resurrect like tinder any time you were in the same room.

He’s been there, all this time. Brushing your hair from your face wet with tears.

Even now, you’re crushed with longing.

He sighs.

“Hey.” Bucky calls, pulling you back into the present. He wipes your jaw.

“He’s not the only star in the sky.”

You turn to look at him, gazing back down at you with such concern and disquiet. The shining metal arm moves over your shoulder, fingertips rubbing your own left arm. You look at its whirring plates and its red five-points on his bicep.

With a twist of his torso, Bucky slips his flesh palm beneath yours, touches each pad of his fingers to your own, bending each fingertip to graze you. He remembers the way you looked at your them on the floor of the jet when he tore the metal cuffs off, the ones that entombed both hands. Your damp little palms with their long fingers, knuckles jutting out. The skin on you had been so thin it was almost translucent.

Sergeant Barnes had opened your fists carefully, ignoring the sparks that erupted up his silver arm.

“Jesus.” He snarled, face turning into a deep scowl, “How many fucking years did they--”

You pulled away and clenched those brittle bird-bones into knots out of habit. You were just a girl. He would have sunken the Raft if he could.

“Which one is that?” Sharon asks, pointing upward to the edge of the Milky Way. Steve cranes his head backward and upside down with a silent question. He is smiling at you now, the little astrophile behind him, head full of twilight.

“Antares.” You say, voice cracking as Bucky grips your hand before letting go. “Red. Supergiant.”

Antares had been there all this time, too. Patiently nestled inside Scorpio, moving across the ink. And now, on a cool March night, it ascends lofty in the sky before the sun. It is glowing and warm, hundreds of light years away, suddenly feeling closer to you than the ground itself.

“I’m so sorry,” you mutter. “I--I didn’t realize...it must have hurt you--”

“It’s okay.” Bucky leans his chin on the top of your head. “It’s okay.”

The North Star passes on, wiped away slowly by the light of the new day.

Steve stands, pats his legs and pulls Sharon up with him. His other hand picks up his shield and snaps it to his back, the white shape staring at you in front of its bullseye. “You two comin?” The words tumble behind his back absently; he’s already plodding off.

With each step, he tramples himself out of your heart. It aligns almost too perfectly- this heliacal rising of your realization, surging with the dawn. Everything splinters and shatters. A wilted laugh falls out of your mouth along with a tear.

_God_. You have been so blind.

“Still want to look at the stars?” Bucky asks gently.

They twinkle high up, barely-there fairy lights turning dimmer each passing second. Then finally, they slip away, like Steve’s footfalls in the distance.

You press your brow to Bucky’s chest, turning downward and hiding.

He tilts his head as a ray of light shoots past the treetop. Slowly, your shaky hand reaches across, tracing the contours of the flashing vermilion star. Your eyelids close, little fingers searching for the lines on him to memorize, to erase the ideals of the past.

“There’s only one,” You say, lifting your chin so that he can see your face. His eyes illuminate like the sunrise when you smile.

“I… only want to look at one.”

**Author's Note:**

> I love him !!!! He is my soft boi


End file.
